fMRI based study could eventually lead to tools to record dreams either therapeutically or recreationally

FMRIs -- scans which measure brain activity based on blood flow -- have shown promise in "mind reading", matching imagesor words that conscious individuals were thinking of. A Japanese team has taken that premise and expanded it in an exciting direction, creating an fMRI-based method to record the images seen while dreaming with 50 percent accuracy.

Professor Kamitani told BBC News in an interview on the work, "I had a strong belief that dream decoding should be possible at least for particular aspects of dreaming... I was not very surprised by the results, but excited."

A new Japanese study uses fMRI scans to record images seen while dreaming.
[Image Source: SPL]

The study involved three volunteers, who were put inside fMRI scanners. When the subjects started to fall asleep, they were woken up and asked to recall what the last thing they remembered seeing was. Images were often surreal, ranging from bronze statues to ice picks; other times they were every-day items.

After over 200 trials per volunteer, the researchers had a database of scans and images. They then grouped the images into common categories. Houses, apartments, skyscrapers, hotels, and stores, for example were classified as "structures".

II. Predicting, Recording the Dreams

The researchers then showed the volunteers pictures of the selected categories and recorded their activity via fMRI. What they found was that the wakeful visual activity in the brain often closely corresponded to the dreaming activity.

In a second round of tests, researchers matched fMRI scans of sleeping patients with their new database of dream image categories and then woke the patients up, asking them what they saw. They were able to correctly guess the dream object 60 percent of the time.

With work ongoing to miniaturize MRIs and with personalized databases of fMRI images, this technique could eventually be put to use to create a "dream recorder". Such a machine would have both therapeutic and recreational promise. Much work would need to be done in order to personalize the recorded images -- say to show not just that you saw a man, but that you saw your father.

However, the work by the ATR team opens an exciting new era in fMRI "mind reading" -- dream reading. A study on the work has been published [abstract] in the prestigious peer-reviewed journal Science.